The disclosure that an insider was being paid by the successful bidder for control of the Olympic stadium threatens to reopen the contest.
The original plan was to keep the stadium as a year-round athletics track after the Games, but that would have required a £5 million annual public subsidy.
Baroness Ford, the regeneration expert who sold the Millennium Dome to AEG, set about designing a more lucrative financial legacy. The key was to get a football club to move on to the Olympic site. West Ham submitted a bid, backed by the local Newham council and with the support of UK Athletics.
Tottenham Hotspur was persuaded to compete against the East London club. Backed by AEG, Spurs’ application appeared to have more financial certainty.
However, when the Olympic Park Legacy Company voted 14-0 for West Ham, the suspicion was that the North Londoners had been encouraged to bid to make the Hammers try harder. “No one was used as a stalking horse,” Baroness Ford insisted.
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The West Ham plan involves keeping the athletics track to be used for 20 days a year. Essex County Cricket Club would share the stadium and the promoter Live Nation will stage concerts.
Spurs’ blueprint was to build a football ground on the stadium’s foundations with athletics moved to an upgraded Crystal Palace. Lord Coe, the Olympic organising committee chairman, dismayed Spurs when he said that Britain’s reputation would be “trashed” if the club’s vision prevailed.
Spurs — and Leyton Orient, the League One club close to the Olympic stadium who fear losing local spectators to West Ham — are seeking a judicial review.